Brock Burke made the first spring training start of his six-year pro career on Sunday, retiring six Padres over two perfect frames, but he wasn’t at his best. His velocity was down, he left a couple of pitches up, and — the culprit, perhaps — he was under the weather.
Burke is not the only one in his story who’s a little sick.
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“To be honest, it’s a little bittersweet because of all the work we put in there,” says Ryan Henderson, Tampa Bay’s national pitching crosschecker. “Texas got a good one.”
It’s been 11 weeks since Texas acquired Burke, sending Jurickson Profar to Oakland and minor league righthander Rollie Lacy to the Rays in exchange for Burke, infielder-outfielder Eli White, and relievers Kyle Bird and Yoel Espinal. Burke’s numbers in Arizona have been tremendous. The buzz around him has been even greater.
The 22-year-old left-hander, with nine games of experience above Class A, has faced 10 hitters in Cactus League play. Seven are big leaguers and the other three spent all of 2018 in AA, including Fernando Tatis Jr., one of baseball’s top two prospects. Burke has allowed one baserunner, on an infield single that wouldn’t have reached the outfield grass if left untouched. He retired the other nine, six on strikes (five swinging and one looking) and three on lazy flies to center.
As part of Jayce Tingler’s role as the Major League Player Development Field Coordinator on manager Chris Woodward’s coaching staff, he is responsible for connecting the organization’s minor league development program with the processes being executed at the big league level. He saw Burke at the Rangers’ mini-camp shortly after the trade and has spent lots of time around the young pitcher in Surprise. He was on hand for Burke’s standout Sunday effort while Woodward traveled with the other half of the Rangers’ split squad to Glendale to face the Dodgers. Nothing surprised Tingler about what Burke did on the mound that day.
“He’s been super impressive all throughout camp. Easy delivery, effortless arm. The ball jumps out of his hand, hops at the top with his fastball. The changeup drops off the table. He spins the baseball well,” Tingler says. “And he keeps his arm speed and release point on all his pitches, which explains why hitters take a lot of off-balance swings against him.”
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Burke has impressed Tingler off the field as well. “Brock’s been mature in the locker room. He really handles himself well. Quiet and professional.
“I was told he was really good — and he’s been as advertised, if not better.”
Building off a breakout 2018 season with the Rays in which he went 6-1, 1.95 after a mid-July promotion to AA Montgomery (.193/.255/.277 opponents’ slash, 71 strikeouts and 14 walks in 55.1 innings), Burke started showing up in industry publications as a name to watch. But he’d been on the Rangers’ radar for years.
Doug Banks is the hitting coach for San Diego’s High-A Lake Elsinore affiliate in the California League. Before A.J. Preller brought him to the Padres, the Colleyville Heritage product spent years as an area scout for the Rangers, covering the Four Corners region (Arizona-Colorado-New Mexico-Utah). He scouted Burke heavily at Evergreen High School, 30 miles west of Denver, dating back to the 6-foot-4 southpaw’s junior year in 2013. “We all liked Brock,” says Banks. “The arm worked well, and he was a good-sized kid.”
The Rangers arranged an in-home visit with Burke early in 2014, and then an extended an invitation to a pre-draft workout in Arlington, but he turned it down. Still, they were one of what they believe were just three teams with serious interest in him. Texas put eyes on every start Burke made as a senior, including three times by West Coast crosschecker Casey Harvie. The velocity barely tripped 90, but Harvie came away more intrigued with each outing. “Brock had a loose stroke and arm and hand speed. And he was a young senior,” Harvie says. “With the age and his size, and combining that with the ease he pitched with, we liked the projection. We thought there was more in there.” Burke threw a no-hitter in March and, a month later, struck out 19 batters in another seven-inning game. He started picking up velocity as the spring wore on — but he also walked nearly seven batters per nine innings. “There were delivery issues and lots to iron out,” says Harvie. “But that’s part of what made him fun to dream on.”
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Burke didn’t visit the Rays for a pre-draft visit either but, relying heavily on Henderson’s recommendation, they believed enough in what they had seen to bet on the 17-year-old. Baseball America’s ranking of the top 500 prospects in the 2014 draft didn’t include Burke, but the Rays thought enough of him not only to make him the 96th overall pick, but also to pay him $897,500 — nearly double the $544,900 slot value, made possible by signing under-slot deals with each of their picks in Rounds 5 through 10 — to convince him to forgo a commitment to pitch for the University of Oregon.
Did the Rangers, who drafted California high school infielder Josh Morgan with the pick immediately before the Rays took Burke, have too low a grade on the left-hander? “I don’t think so,” says Harvie. “Why? Because he was so far away that you really don’t know what’s gonna happen. He could have easily not made it out of A ball. When you see a kid throwing 85-91, it’s not exactly thrilling stuff when you’re seeing other high school kids at 90-95.”
Harvie credits the Rays not just for the scouting success on Burke, but also for what they were able to do after putting a uniform on him. “Tampa Bay may be the best organization in the league for developing pitching, especially starters. They’re incredible. Scouting and drafting a big-league starter is hard to do. We admire them. The entire league admires them.” Harvie, in his 17th year as a scout and eighth with Texas, points to pitchers like David Price, James Shields, Matt Moore, Wade Davis, Alex Cobb, Jeremy Hellickson, and Jeff Niemann as examples of starters that the Rays drafted and developed over the last decade-plus. Blake Snell is the latest graduate, and there’s another wave on the doorstep, headed by Brent Honeywell.
Burke was right there as well, but feels he has a better opportunity with Texas than he had with the Rays, based in part on conversations he’s had with Woodward and pitching coach Julio Rangel. “There’s a possibility that I’ll get called up this year. With the Rays, I never really thought about it as much of a possibility because they have so much talent at the AAA and big-league levels. It wasn’t really in my thoughts until I got traded.”
Burke fits a development timeline with the Rangers that includes fellow left-handers Taylor Hearn and Joe Palumbo and right-hander Jonathan Hernandez, just behind the big league-experienced duo of southpaw Yohander Mendez and righty Ariel Jurado. Most believe the four who have yet to reach Texas have greater upside.
The Rays initially took things slowly with Burke, keeping him in extended spring training and short-season ball his first three pro seasons before turning him loose. They scrubbed his hard drive of everything he’d been taught in Colorado and virtually built the pitcher from scratch. After walking seven batters per nine innings as a high school senior and then eight per nine in his first summer as a pro, he cut that number to under two walks per nine innings the following year. He added 20 pounds to his lanky frame and went through a weighted-ball program with Tampa Bay, inspired by the Driveline Baseball system that the Rangers have gotten their own arms around recently. Burke saw his velocity tick up to the mid-90s. Before long, he was touching 97.
Suddenly, the pitcher who in 2014 wasn’t on thoughtful lists of the top 500 players eligible for the draft that year alone found himself on far more exclusive lists of the best prospects in the pro game. Burke split 2017 between Tampa Bay’s Low-A and High-A clubs, and 2018 between High-A and AA, a season in which he earned Pitcher of the Year honors in the Rays system (9-6, 3.08, 158 strikeouts and 44 walks in 137.1 innings, only six home runs allowed). Since arriving from a cold-weather program with a stack of mechanical issues to iron out, he’s improved every year.
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“You’ve got to tip your cap to the Rays,” Harvie says. “That was a classic deep projection pick. Take the raw ingredients, hand your pitcher over to player development, then be patient. When you’re talking about a $900,000 bonus, that’s a ballsy pick versus going with a safer college guy.”
Henderson is proud of the find and tips his own cap to the work his organization did with Burke. “What we saw as an amateur is exactly what he’s doing now,” Henderson says. “He was a projection guy, but he had all the intangibles. Our guys did a great job with him — but this is a great opportunity for him with Texas. I’m happy for the kid.”
“That’s the beauty of scouting,” Harvie says. “Prospects who are farther away can blow right by more famous ‘now-oriented’ prospects out of college who are the talk of Twitter and on the cover of Baseball America. Maybe Burke’s another example of that. He was raw and needed a lot of instruction and patience with the development. But it paid off.”
The Rangers leaned on reports on Burke from pro scouts Mitchell Webb and Mike Grouse as the club headed down the path with the Rays and A’s in the Profar talks. The fastball data that Texas gathered on Burke lined up with the scouting reports. The club likely could have just kept the $2 million draft pick (39th overall this coming June) that Oakland moved to Tampa Bay in the deal rather than insist on Burke. They wanted the pitcher.
Since showing up in Surprise as a first-time 40-man roster member, Burke has tried to soak up everything he can from the Rangers’ veteran pitchers before the inevitable minor-league assignment comes. Not surprisingly, he’s gravitated toward Drew Smyly, another rangy left-hander — and a former Ray himself (2014-16). “It’s nice to come over and see a familiar face and watch a guy who has gone about his business for some years, and obviously a tall, lanky lefty,” says Burke. “I can see myself trying to fill his shoes in the future.”
Burke is in the same PFP (pitchers’ fielding practice) group with Smyly, who was traded early in his career himself. The 29-year-old has been impressed with how Burke is carrying himself in a new environment. “I’ve gotten to spend more time with him than the other guys, [and] he seems older than he is,” Smyly says. “[Just] watching him, he seems a little more mature than most guys his age. And he prepares to do what it takes.”
Burke couldn’t get to 97 mph on Sunday. He wasn’t feeling well, and took 89-93 to the mound against a representative Padres lineup. But the putaway slider and the fading changeup were working and kept hitters off his fastball. He got through his two innings without surrendering a baserunner or any hard contact.
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“It was definitely a confidence booster,” Burke said after his day was done. “I felt like I didn’t have some of my best stuff, [but even without] the fastball velo that I normally have [I was] still able to carry through and get some strikeouts and get good outs. I was very happy about that.”
Rangers Senior Director of Amateur Scouting Kip Fagg is happy as well — at least he is now. He knows the Rangers could have a good one in Burke, a player his group scouted in high school but, he admits, missed on. “We didn’t do a very good job there, to be honest,” Fagg says. “We saw him, but we didn’t see enough. Glad we have him now.”
Texas has a fresh opportunity with Burke, thanks to the December trade that saw the club convert Profar into young rotation help. Burke has a fresh opportunity as well, perhaps a better one than he would have had with the Rays to get to the big leagues and make an impact every fifth day.
Burke is past his sickness, and so is his new team. As for his old team, they may have trouble getting over it so quickly.
EXIT VELO
- According to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, the four-year contract Texas signed Jose Leclerc to on Wednesday is the largest ever given to a relief pitcher with less than three years of service. The deal reportedly guarantees the Rangers’ closer $14 million through 2022, with club options in 2023 ($6 million) and 2024 ($6.25 million). Texas can buy out the option years for $750,000. You can read much more about Leclerc’s deal in Levi Weaver’s piece from Wednesday.
- After Texas traded minor league right-hander Xavier Moore to Minnesota for outfielder Zack Granite over the weekend, Minnesota flipped Moore to Baltimore for $750,000 in international bonus pool space.
(Photo courtesy of Kelly Gavin and the Texas Rangers)
